Tuesday, February 15, 2011

I wanna tell you a story 2

In the first instalment I left you hanging from a router-infested cliff; would our heroine survive another encounter with the Power Tool of Her Nightmares? Read on...

You may imagine how I agonised over the whole thing, my record being what it is. But I made a template and used the guide bush and it was... okay. In fact it was fine. I managed to be a muppet and lightly graze an area of bench top I didn't want to, but nothing serious.



And there it is. Not bad, eh? I could almost - almost - learn to like the router if it always behaved like that.



Next step was to fit the hinged mounting plate to its recess. A matter complicated by the fact that it's been repaired with a weld at some point, so all sorts of relief in odd places was required. I procured a candle and sooted up the plate so I could see where I needed to remove wood and where I didn't. Viz. It's not pretty, is it? A very real work in progress shot, that.


After considerable testing, fitting, paring, tweaking and general madness-inducing work, it fitted. Woot!


So I had to try it with the jaw in place too, didn't I? A word of huge love and affection for the Veritas hold down; it made the job 2000% easier. It just sat there in its hole and held that hinged mounting plate in its recess like a champ. Without it I would have gone even more insane than I did anyway; with it I could hold the thing in place while I endlessly fiddled about.


Even to the point of putting the front jaw in place. Which reminds me; another tip I found somewhere was to install a screw so the hub rests on the head - that way to can make sure your rear jaw is at 90° to the bench top. Very handy.


With the beam in situ, I was able to mark off where I needed to remove yet more precious bench in order to be able to close the vice at all.


At this point I almost had a functional face vice, but of course it wouldn't rotate for toffee.

6 comments:

  1. looking good though Alf
    enjoyable read as usual

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  2. Ohh, when you said router, I thought you meant router, not screaming, tailed demon...

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  3. Do you also write the cliffhangers for the Archers?

    As a turner I rarely have cause to worry about vices...my Elu stronghold thingy does just about everything I ever need of a vice. But...now you've got me looking at benches and vices! So if you get a Christmas card from my bank you'll understand why.

    Great series of posts.

    Andy

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  4. Good to see that the routing went well, Alf.

    I'm sure you'd enjoy using the router more if you used a large square sub-base on it. Trend make one that takes the guide bushes or you can make your own from MDF or perspex. Makes the router really stable, particularly when it's half on and half off the work piece.

    Cheers ;-)

    Paul Chapman

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  5. Alf,
    I don't see how you will deal with the rotation of the vice as mentioned by James Watriss in his blog. Hasn't the shape of your cutout effectively prevented this?

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  6. Rob, that's a fair point - I may have to edit!

    Andy, what can I say? Nigel just had to go.

    Chris, you've got ahead of me (slow worker here, unlike you!) so the next entry should explain.

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